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Why Do South American Flamingos Have a Pink Color to Their Feathers?

Flamingos are seen in a variety of colors, from white and orange to pink. Baby flamingos are actually born with gray feathers. Zoo and animal park officials will tell guests that the flamingos are the color they are because of their diet of small brine shrimp. That is true to an extent, as it is the chemicals in those shrimp that give the flamingo its color. While some flamingos will eat the shrimp, others also eat blue-green algae and will have a deeper shade of their natural color. The South American or Chilean flamingo is a pale pink color due to the makeup of the brine shrimp it eats.

Level of Carotenoids in Diet
- Left unchecked and simply fed a dietary supplement, a flamingo will eventually lose its coloring and become more white than pink. The naturally occurring carotene in the brine shrimp and in the blue-green algae that the shrimp eat is a staple of flamingo diets. It is broken down in the bird's liver into several pink and orange molecules. The molecules color the feathers, bill and legs of the flamingos. For the South American flamingo, the most plentiful food source available to them is the brine shrimp.
Low Levels of Algae in Diet
- While most flamingos will eat both algae and brine shrimp, in areas where the algae is not as ubiquitous as the shrimp, the pink coloration is pale or dull, as in the South American habitats. But in areas where the algae is more prevalent, the birds' more natural coloring will be enhanced and seen as a brighter coloring than those on a diet of mostly shrimp.
Chlorophyll &Carotenoids
- The diet of the small brine shrimp flamingos eat is also a cause for the coloration of all flamingos. The shrimp eat the blue-green algae, which is rich in chlorophyll, the chemical that aids a plant's ability to turn sunlight into food. This combination of a rich chlorophyll diet of the shrimp, combined with the excess amounts of beta carotene, aids the flamingo in manufacturing vitamin A. When flamingos eat the particular kinds of shrimp that eat these algae, the addition of chlorophyll enhances the coloring of the birds. Leaves on trees are a good example of this reaction. In fall when the temperature changes, the chlorophyll drains out, leaving the reddish-orange carotene-induced hues.
Duplicating the Flamingo Effect With Pills
- Some people believe that by taking an artificial carotene supplement called canthaxanthin that they will look as if they have a suntan. After all, carotene is the chemical found in carrots and is safe to eat. Unfortunately, a human being couldn't eat enough carrots to affect his skin coloring. And also unfortunately for those who take the pills, their "tan" often ends up more orange than tan or brown.

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